


Moving Objects

by choomchoom



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Aftercare, Bondage, Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, M/M, Mild Painplay, Overstimulation, Past Abuse, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Safeword Use, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:33:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22962463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom
Summary: Prowl and Starscream discover an alternative to fighting.
Relationships: Prowl/Starscream
Comments: 9
Kudos: 63
Collections: Tfp





	Moving Objects

**Author's Note:**

> Notes on consent and possible triggers: the Dubious Consent tag refers to some messy negotiations as the characters figure out D/s stuff including their own desires and limits, but they’re both trying to be kind and attentive to each other the whole time. The Past Abuse tag refers to a past relationship between Megatron and Starscream involving nonconsensual/non-negotiated kink. The fic also starts out with a single instance of domestic violence, which is the inciting incident for the relationship to move in a new, positive direction. PLEASE do not read if these things will be upsetting to you. If you have questions about the content or want more details, you can ask in the comments or on my tumblr (choomchoom.tumblr.com). Anonymous comments and messages are open.

Starscream hit Prowl exactly one time.

They’d been arguing about something – cleaning, probably, or how hard Starscream slammed the doors around the apartment they shared, or Prowl’s refusal to just _say_ when he wasn’t in the mood for a conversation and instead jump straight to snippy one-word answers. Starscream had hit Prowl, slapping him across the face, and Prowl had hit him back, the heel of his hand to Starscream’s cockpit, hard enough to send Starscream tumbling backward to the floor.

Then he…stopped. Both of them stopped. Prowl stood over Starscream, not wanting to escalate any more, and Starscream made no move to escalate things, despite the implicit threat of his tensed shoulders and bared teeth. It seemed to Prowl like he was expecting Prowl to hit him again.

Prowl clamped down on the rush of hurt at the prospect that Starscream expected that Prowl would _want_ to hit him and went about executing the solution that had clicked into place in his mind as soon as he’d understood what was going on.

“On your knees,” he said.

Starscream scrambled to his knees, fans roaring from the tension of the fight, and maybe from the order as well.

“Get yourself to the berthroom. _On your knees,_ ” Prowl said.

Starscream complied without a hint of protest. His expression had shifted from the anger Prowl had seen before to a wanting and vulnerability that had Prowl confident he was on the right track towards giving Starscream what he needed right now.

They were supposed to talk about this first. But Prowl knew that if he stopped, Starscream would more than likely clam up and the fighting would resume. He was willing to rely on his own perception of Starscream’s needs and Starscream’s willingness to state his own limits in order to avoid that scenario.

There was rope on the floor from a package Prowl had recently gotten delivered – ha, Prowl’s lack of care for picking up things that were lying around had been one of Starscream’s gripes this evening, hadn’t it? Prowl lifted the rope and pulled it taut between his hands, stepping in front of Starscream and looming over him with Starscream still on his knees.

“I’m going to tie your hands behind your back. Then you’re going to pleasure me, and I’ll decide whether you’ve performed well enough to earn me pleasuring you in return. You can tell me to stop at any time and I will stop. Would you like me to go on?”

Starscream nodded without a hint of hesitation. Prowl would have preferred properly negotiated consent, but Starscream’s eagerness was undeniable, and Prowl had meant what he’d said about his willingness to stop any time.

Prowl tied Starscream’s wrists, tight enough that his arms and wings would chafe against each other if he moved much at all. His fans started to whir louder as Prowl cinched the knot.

Prowl stepped around him to sit on the berth. He spread his legs wide, exposing the cover of his interface panel between his legs in its entirety. “You heard the rules,” he said. “Impress me.”

Starscream walked toward Prowl, still on his knees, struggling with the added restraint of his hands and wings. His expression flashed with discomfort at his attempt to take a graceful step, but he didn’t say anything, only adjusted his gait so that he shuffled slowly toward Prowl until he was close enough to bend down and lick the seam at the top of Prowl’s panel, slowly and sensually.

Prowl chuckled. If he were actually the type of person who was aroused by being on this side of things, he expected that the sight of Starscream straining his shoulders to bend over Prowl’s panel might be alluring. As it was, the move only aroused him as much as Starscream’s tongue there would in any other circumstance.

Starscream changed tactics, using his nose to tease at sensitive spots on the inside of Prowl’s thighs. That felt nice, nice enough that Prowl had to cycle his vents to remind himself that he wasn’t here for the pleasure – he was doing this because Starscream clearly needed it.

Still, though, when Starscream’s tongue prodded at the seam of his panel a second time, Prowl unlatched it. Starscream paused for a moment – they’d never done this before, and tongue on interface circuits could fry a vocal synthesizer if the recipient didn’t ground their charge properly.

The hesitation lasted only a moment, though, and then Starscream’s tongue was teasing the tip of Prowl’s cable, the sensation so intense that Prowl barely managed to keep it from sparking and shocking Starscream. He realized a moment later that he probably shouldn’t have done that – maybe Starscream would have liked to feel the shock. There were certainly hardware mods that Prowl could install to maintain the charge at the tip of his cable at safe levels for that, but Prowl hadn’t exactly planned ahead for this.

Starscream seemed to have gained some confidence with his tongue on Prowl’s array, now, and he licked smooth strips on the sensitive plating between Prowl’s cable and his port, careful not to touch either. Prowl would have been writhing if he hadn’t been so determined to keep himself under control for this. He couldn’t suppress his shudders as Starscream lessened the pressure, just slightly, and Starscream could certainly hear the increasingly loud whir of his fans.

Completely without warning, Starscream shifted his tongue from Prowl’s array to his port, filling it with smooth, supple, sensitive plating. Prowl overloaded almost without expecting it and felt delicate circuits in his hands and optics fry as he grounded the charge throughout his frame. His fans sped up to blow off the excess heat, and for a few seconds he could do nothing but sit in a stupor, every circuit lingering on the intensity of the overload.

When he moved, it was out of determination rather than desire. He’d made a promise.

Starscream’s port cover snapped open at the barest hint of a touch from Prowl. Starscream strained his shoulders as Prowl used two gentle fingers to grasp the tip of Starscream’s cable, an intimate kind of touch that Prowl only realized in doing it that he’d never done on another person before, and plugged it into his own port.

For the first time since lashing Starscream’s wrists together, Prowl let himself touch Starscream. He avoided the straining cables of his shoulders and placed his hands on Starscream’s sides. At Starscream pressing into the touch, he slowly moved them down to his waist and used them as leverage to pull Starscream in for a kiss.

Starscream overloaded at the moment their lips met, frame sagging against Prowl’s hands. Prowl waited until Starscream’s frame had recovered from the overload enough to stand, still on his knees, upright, before he stood up to remove Starscream’s bindings. Starscream was silent, fans still blowing off excess heat from the overload, as Prowl removed the ropes and tossed them away. He kept a gentle grip on Starscream’s arms as they relaxed against his sides, attentive for any signs of lingering pain. The ropes hadn’t been nearly thick enough to dent his plating, but the strain of the position had probably caused some soreness. He didn’t appear to be hurting beyond that, though.

Prowl stepped back around Starscream, noticing as he did that Starscream’s optics had gone dim with exhaustion or relaxation. He only realized then how strange it was that Starscream had allowed Prowl at his back at all; typically he had his optics oriented toward Prowl if they were in the same room. There was a pang somewhere in the vicinity of Prowl’s spark at that, at the proof of being trusted that much by Starscream.

Starscream still didn’t say anything as Prowl guided him onto the berth, on his back to avoid aggravating his arms more. His fans had slowed and his optics were still dim. His gaze hardly moved to follow Prowl’s motions as he grabbed a detailing kit from its drawer near the berth and used a clean cloth to rub oil into the strained seams in Starscream’s shoulders.

That only took a few minutes. After setting the kit aside, Prowl watched for any sign of reluctance as he took Starscream into his arms. Starscream relaxed against Prowl in a way Prowl had never felt before, like every individual panel of his plating was pressing into him. It was different enough to make him realize that every other time they’d laid on the berth like this, Starscream had been ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

Now, though, he was trusting Prowl with his safety, with his frame, with everything. Prowl intended to be worthy of that trust.

They still needed to talk about this. But Starscream’s optics were dark with impending recharge by the time he realized it, and Prowl was content to plug in both of their recharge cables and save the discussion for the morning.

* * *

Prowl woke up cold, which immediately indicated to him that as usual, Starscream had woken up first. Starscream had always been…well, flighty, about sharing a berth. Prowl did his best not to begrudge Starscream for it.

So when Prowl opened his optics, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that Starscream hadn’t actually left. He was curled into himself in a corner of the berth, hugging his knees and looking directly at Prowl.

Prowl braced himself. Starscream was unpredictable at the best of times, and this conversation was already starting off on unstable ground.

“How are you feeling?” Prowl asked once it became clear that Starscream wasn’t going to start the conversation.

At that, the simplest of questions, Starscream looked away. “Will you be upset if my answer is ‘conflicted’?”

“Not upset. Perhaps concerned.” Prowl sat up in the berth and unplugged his recharge cable, careful not to move any closer to Starscream as he did. He could tell from the fact that Starscream was here and talking that Starscream wasn’t upset with _him_ , which was, perhaps selfishly, Prowl’s most significant worry.

“I suppose you’ve already figured out that you’re not the first one who’s…played with me, like that.”

“I suspected.”

“When Megatron would take me like that, it was…violent, it was terrifying, it was painful. What you did…it was satisfying in the same way, even without any of those things. I think…I need to do that sometimes. But I don’t want it to escalate to that. I don’t want you to act like he did.”

“Megatron took advantage of you,” Prowl said, more and more certain of that truth as Starscream spoke. “I’m never going to treat you that way. If you ever want me to stop, I’ll stop. If you want me to do more or less, I’ll listen when you tell me that. _I_ don’t want you to suffer.” Starscream’s optics had been focused on Prowl, intense and wary, but he turned away at the last. “If you want to do something like that again, I’m open to it,” Prowl finished. “On whatever terms you set.”

Starscream looked at Prowl again. This time, he was halfway smiling.

* * *

They talked more. Apparently Megatron had done the same thing Prowl had, gotten Starscream to use his mouth on his array, but he hadn’t bothered to ground the charge and always shorted out Starscream’s vocalizer, sometimes badly enough that it had needed to be replaced. Megatron had always dominated Starscream in the berth right after they’d fought, which didn’t surprise Prowl one bit.

With every detail he heard, Prowl was more and more inclined to act as little like Megatron as he could manage, so he suggested they schedule their next scene in advance. Starscream had smiled when he’d insisted on that route, making Prowl doubly glad he’d thought of it.

So here they were, Prowl significantly more relaxed this time, now that he was actually prepared. He’d gotten some sense of what exactly Starscream was after on nights like these from their awkward, halting conversations about it, and he was as confident as he could be that he was prepared to deliver it.

Prowl wasn’t sure if it came from his long and deeply toxic relationship with Megatron or if it was something innate, but Starscream had serious hangups about accepting comfort of any sort. The only thing he’d found that removed those barriers from his processor for long enough to really enjoy being coddled and held was interface combined with pain and domination. Any insecurities Prowl had about his own role were largely quenched by Starscream’s trust in Prowl that first night and his stories of what a terrible partner Megatron had been. Dominating someone during interface wasn’t a position Prowl would have leapt to fill, but being the one with the knowledge and the ability to do it for Starscream was satisfying despite that.

“On the berth,” Prowl said as soon as Starscream entered the room. He was certain that given Starscream’s experience with ‘foreplay’, any small talk he attempted to make would turn into a screaming fight – and it would be their first since the last one had turned into, well, this. Better to simply get down to business.

Starscream seemed satisfied with the arrangement. He marched his way to the berth, wings held high and strides graceful, unwilling to submit until Prowl made him.

Prowl planned to. Without speaking, he took Starscream’s hands one by one and bound them to the supports on the berth, then he did the same with Starscream’s legs. He shoved a soft-sided support into the space between Starscream’s wings to keep them from getting scraped up too badly on the metal of the berth.

He laid a hand on the plating just below Starscream’s cockpit, where Starscream wouldn’t be able to see it. Starscream writhed at that, snapping the restraints tight before his frame seemed to realize that he was securely bound and relax.

“I’d like to blindfold you,” Prowl said. “Tell me if you want that.”

Starscream bared his teeth at Prowl in a snarl then practically spat, “Yes.”

They could work on communication. For now, Prowl rewarded the effort by binding a thick black cloth over Starscream’s optics. Starscream relaxed further into the berth.

Prowl grabbed a shock stick from the drawer he’d put it in after testing it on himself earlier. The shock it produced was painful, but not enough to make a bot worry about their frame’s integrity.

Prowl didn’t start with the shock stick. He started with one finger, tracing a long seam down Starscream’s side, making him shiver. Then he did the same on his leg, teasing him with light touches until Starscream’s panel clicked open.

Then Prowl used the shock stick. On a thruster to start, somewhere guaranteed to have low sensitivity to let him acclimate to the toy. Starscream gasped and strained against the restraints, making the berth creak. Prowl gave him a minute, in case it turned out to be too much, but Starscream didn’t tell him to stop.

Prowl went back to the gentle touches with one hand, tracing the bottom of Starscream’s cockpit. Starscream squirmed. With the other hand, Prowl pressed the shock stick into Starscream’s side.

Starscream gasped and his fans whirred faster. Prowl smiled to himself, knowing that there was no way Starscream could see it. He’d been wondering if he could make Starscream overload without ever touching his array, and at this point it was looking quite likely. Prowl traced a meandering line down Starscream’s front toward his array, and at the last second he replaced his finger with the shock stick, shocking him on the sensitive plating just above the latch of his panel.

Starscream contorted himself as charge wracked his frame and Prowl couldn’t help but do what he could to help Starscream ride it out comfortably despite the restraints. He set the shock stick down to rub smooth circles on Starscream’s sides, absorbing a little of the charge as it jumped from Starscream’s frame to his, not stopping until Starscream’s overload was done and his fans finished dispelling the excess heat.

Prowl removed his hands. Starscream made a tiny keening noise at the loss. Prowl didn’t make him wait long before touching the exposed tip of Starscream’s cable with one finger while simultaneously using the shock stick on the inside of his thigh.

Starscream overloaded again just at that, the charge that pushed through his cable stinging Prowl’s finger. Prowl found himself grinning.

Starscream’s fans took longer to dispel the charge this time. Once Starscream seemed to have recovered, Prowl climbed onto the berth between Starscream’s legs. Starscream bucked towards him as much as he could manage with his limbs tied. Prowl firmly placed a hand on his chest to push him back down.

Prowl returned his attention to Starscream’s array, tracing the plating around his port and sliding his cable against the inside of Starscream’s thigh to warn him that it was coming. Starscream moaned.

Prowl hadn’t built up much charge himself, having gone in knowing that there wasn’t much about this situation that he’d find arousing. It took remembering the shock to his finger from touching Starscream’s cable during his overload for him to get charged up enough to avoid getting zapped from plugging in to a charged-up frame. By the time he felt ready, Starscream was writhing under him from the slow movement of Prowl’s cable toward Starscream’s open port. Prowl used the shock stick one more time for good measure and then plugged in, sending his own charge through the port to mingle with what had already built up in Starscream’s frame. It took only a few pulses to bring Starscream to overload again.

Prowl had planned beyond this point, but Starscream was venting in short bursts and his frame sagged against the berth and the support and the restraints, his expression vacant and content. Prowl disconnected his cable and closed Starscream’s panel, kissing it lightly to let him know that he was done with the scene. He could tell he’d picked the right endpoint, because Starscream hardly reacted, his frame lax against the berth.

Prowl removed and tossed aside the restraints, gently massaging the joints they’d put pressure on. He was thorough but didn’t linger, and soon enough he climbed back on to the berth to cradle Starscream against him. He held Starscream close with one hand and stroked his frame with the other; the back of his helm, his arms, his sides, and even his wings, a touch Starscream would usually flinch away from. He held Starscream for as long as it took him to slip into recharge.

* * *

The next several weeks made it clear that this was pivotal. The fighting in their apartment had dulled down to occasional pithy sniping, and Starscream had started to seem more relaxed all the time. He would turn his back on Prowl without seeming to think about it and he’d started touching Prowl more. Before, he’d almost never touched Prowl outside the berthroom – Prowl guessed, at seeing the change, that he’d seen touch more as a tool of power than a gesture of affection.

All in all, Prowl was satisfied with the arrangement.

Prowl had gotten used to Starscream not talking after they played, as Starscream called it, so his first reaction upon hearing Starscream clear his vocalizer as they cuddled in the berth was to tense up. 

“You didn’t overload,” Starscream said, still slack against Prowl.

He hadn’t, tonight. He usually didn’t when they played and preferred not to, more interested in staying in control of Starscream’s submission than getting off on it. “I would have overloaded if I’d wanted to,” Prowl assured him.

There was _hurt_ in Starscream’s voice as he said, “Why didn’t you want to?”

“It’s nothing to do with you,” Prowl said, because it was clear that he had to specify that. “It’s that…I’m more interested in being on the other side of this.”

Starscream moved to look at Prowl, his optics shifting back to full power. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I really am happy to give you what you need,” Prowl said, stroking the space between Starscream’s wings, taking advantage of one of the rare times that he could. “It doesn’t bother me or make me uncomfortable, and I’m glad that you trust me to do that for you. I just don’t get off on being in power.”

“I’d be amenable to returning the favor,” Starscream said, quietly enough that Prowl could have denied having heard it. His frame betrayed him, though, tensing with excitement at the prospect. Starscream chuckled. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

“Let’s talk tomorrow.”

* * *

Prowl’s helm spun with anxiety as he prepared to walk into the room.

The problem wasn’t Starscream, oddly enough. As soon as Prowl realized that he was nervous about this, he’d done his best to examine why – it would be cruel and unfair to Starscream if Prowl tried this without actually trusting him to do it right. But when Prowl replaced Starscream with Mesothulas or Tumbler or even Bonecrusher (who he’d never been with but would have quite liked to) in his mind, the anxiety felt exactly the same.

Prowl trusted Starscream to be fair to him and to do his best to bring to life what Prowl had asked for. The problem was that Prowl could no longer trust himself not to panic at receiving the specific kind of loss of control he’d always craved.

It had been a long time, since Methothulas, since he’d had anyone he trusted to do this. He’d tried to simulate it himself, but it had never quite had the same effect. He’d needed to be in control all the time, during the war, and he could admit by now that his processor had started to splinter from it.

Maybe this wouldn’t even feel good anymore.

Regardless, he’d set his terms, and despite his worries, he didn’t actually want to back out. He opened the door.

Starscream greeted him with a dangerous grin, one that Prowl recognized from war footage and had never before seen in their berthroom. Charged flicked through Prowl’s internals just at the sight of it.

Prowl took in all the details of the room: an unfamiliar machine in the corner that looked like it would assist with what Prowl had asked for, cuffs already dangling from the two hooks in the ceiling, adjusted so that Prowl would be kneeling on the berth with his whole frame accessible to Starscream. Some combination of trepidation and arousal hit him at the sight of it.

“Let’s begin,” Starscream said, sounding decisive and serious. Prowl’s worry decreased, his processor already eager to relinquish control to him. “On the berth.”

“If you insist,” Prowl said, walking over as slowly as he could make himself.

Starscream grinned that cutting grin again. “Oh, I do.”

As soon as Prowl’s arm was in range Starscream seized his wrist and hooked it up to one of the cables. Prowl had to strain to maintain the angle standing. He continued onto the berth. When he knelt there, the cuff held his hand comfortably up, but not so comfortably that he had much in the way of range of motion.

Starscream stepped up onto the berth himself to fasten the other cuff, towering over the kneeling Prowl. Prowl heard his own fans kick on at the sensation of being restrained, possibly combined with the fact that Starscream’s closed panel was right in front of his face.

When he finished securing the cuffs, Starscream looked down at Prowl, optics bright and alive in the relative darkness of the room. He stooped and caught Prowl’s mouth in a tender kiss.

Prowl’s optics blinked off and he didn’t even notice until Starscream had pulled away. He turned them back on with a jolt of panic. That was the point of this, of course, but his processor wasn’t nearly ready to give up on the hypervigilance that defined all his interactions with the world.

Starscream had clearly noticed and he smiled, gentler this time, before tying a blindfold over Prowl’s optics. Anxiety squeezed at his spark, fading as his processor adjusted to the new situation. He was tied up, so he couldn’t do anything about the blindfold, and besides, this situation was a relatively safe one with limited variables.

He’d just started to relax after acclimating to the blindfold when Starscream turned the noise machine on.

It was just white noise, Prowl told his already-protesting processor. It was predictable and repetitive and easy to tune out –

It wasn’t white noise. It was radio static. Even better for getting Prowl’s processor to give up like he wanted it too, but worse in this moment, when trying to listen for any snippet of speech or a pattern or _anything_ hogged for his attention.

He was so focused on the noise that he jumped when Starscream first touched him. The static was loud enough that Prowl hadn’t heard him move back across the room.

“Alright?” Starscream murmured into Prowl’s audial, hand starting to tease at the wires it could reach from the seam where his doorwings met his back.

“Yes,” Prowl choked out, his processor barely able to string together the phonemes in between searching the static noise for patterns and trying to predict where Starscream’s other hand might be in space.

Starscream’s hand slipped away and it was a few long seconds of trying to figure out what he was doing before Starscream touched him again, his tongue to the seam at the top of Prowl’s panel.

Prowl’s panel snapped open at the contact. Prowl hadn’t incorporated _this_ into their play again since Starscream’s nasty revelation about Megatron being a fan of it, but that barely floated through his mind now as he gasped. Starscream’s tongue prodded just slightly at the components of Prowl’s array, sensitizing everything and providing no relief. Prowl didn’t think he’d ever wanted an overload so badly in his life and his ventilations were practically shrieks by the time Starscream, again without warning, plugged his cable into Prowl’s port.

By that point, plugging in was all it took to bring Prowl to overload, the aftershocks of it leaving him shaking in the handcuffs. His processor had glitched a little with the arousal and the charge and the strain it was already under and it had started to move sluggishly, in a way that Prowl knew from experience would lead to eventual relief.

But the panic was back full force, screaming at him to remove the blindfold, to break free of the cuffs, to lash out at Starscream, to bang his head against something. The fear kicked his fans up to a higher notch, and his helm had started to throb.

Starscream touched him again, just a gentle stroke above Prowl’s array, and it felt like fire on his plating. 

“Stop,” he said in a choked voice through gritted teeth. As he said it, he worried that it wouldn’t even register in the noise of the room.

But Starscream stopped. He unplugged his cable from Prowl’s port without touching Prowl again and the radio static stopped at the same time. He must have wired an off switch into a wireless communicator to be able to do that from the berth. The proof that he’d prepared for this eventuality warmed Prowl’s spark in a way that helped chase off some of the panic.

“Do you want me to untie you?” Starscream asked. “I will if you don’t respond.”

“Don’t untie me. I want to do this.” In the sudden quiet, he noticed that the hypervigilance was already blunted. His processor was no longer concerned with anything that might be taking place outside this room. The remembered bliss of not worrying about anything at all called to him, and it was so close he could taste it. “It’s just – it’s been a long time since I’ve done this. I never used to be this scared of losing control.”

“I don’t know if I can fix that,” Starscream said. “But to whatever extent I can, I’m here to protect you. No one is relying on you right now. If you lose control, nothing bad will happen. I’ll keep you safe.”

Maybe it was the fact that Prowl’s processor was already starting to go numb from overload and overstimulation, but in that moment, Prowl trusted Starscream completely. “Keep going.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, then.” Starscream’s voice had acquired a deeper, certain tone that made something deep in Prowl’s struts thrum. Instead of the static, a new noise came on – six or seven radio stations layered on top of each other, songs and speech in as many languages. Prowl’s processor latched onto it and whirred to separate out the streams of input – a solvable puzzle in a way the static hadn’t been, but complicated enough from overlap and differences in sound quality to keep his processor occupied –

And complicated enough for his processor to lose track completely when Starscream put his tongue back on Prowl’s array. Prowl expected to feel Starscream’s cable sliding into his port again, but his processor barely reacted when instead Starscream started to unspool Prowl’s cable with his _teeth_.

Prowl’s _body_ reacted to that, his thighs wanting to squeeze together to get more stimulation on his array. Starscream’s hands clamped down on them, though, holding him in place, and Prowl could only whine as Starscream unspooled his cable, ever so slowly, and gave it a final teasing lick before moving it from his teeth to his hand and plugging it into his port.

A finger played at the tip of Prowl’s port and the realization that Starscream wasn’t expecting Prowl to modulate his charge shut down a few more of the overtaxed relays in his processor. His charge zipped from his frame to Starscream’s in uneven bursts. Prowl was starting to acclimate to the sensation when Starscream plugged his cable into Prowl’s port, pushed a substantial amount of that charge back through the connection, and Prowl overloaded so hard he saw white behind the blindfold.

Then everything was quiet. The clashing channels of sound still played in the background, but they weren’t a concern of Prowl’s anymore. The only thing that mattered was that Starscream had started kissing him tenderly. Prowl kissed back, not really thinking about what he was doing, his processor blank as his frame did what felt good.

He was charged up again, or Starscream was – it was hard to tell with the reciprocal connection, and in this state of quiet bliss, it didn’t seem to matter. Starscream had one hand on Prowl’s hip, stabilizing his posture as Prowl sagged strutless in the restraints, and his other hand was somewhere mysterious, and that didn’t matter either.

They kissed, and Starscream started to tease at wires on Prowl’s back, and Starscream held Prowl against him as they overloaded together.

Prowl didn’t know how long Starscream held him there before moving one hand to disconnect their arrays and close both of their panels. Next he unlocked the cuffs, supporting Prowl’s frame against him as he did. Prowl’s processor was already reemerging in tiny increments, and he clung to Starscream as soon as his hands were free to do so, greedy to get as much uncomplicated joy out of the closeness as he could.

“On or off?” Starscream asked, pinching one edge of the blindfold with two fingers. It took Prowl much longer than it should have to put together what it was he was asking and he had to patiently remind himself that that was okay.

“Off,” Prowl said. For the few minutes he had to experience the world without every detail of it buzzing through his hyperactive processor, he wanted to experience as much of it as he could manage.

Starscream slipped the blindfold off, revealing the darkened berthroom, easy on Prowl’s optics. Starscream reached behind him and Prowl had barely strung together the presence of mind to wonder why by the time he emerged with a thick blanket that had been hidden somewhere. He wrapped it around Prowl, and the weight on plating that was already starting to tingle from returning hypersensitivity was sweeter relief than Prowl could have anticipated.

Starscream repositioned them so that he was sitting against the wall, Prowl wrapped in the blanket in his lap. Prowl rested his helm against him and let his processor click back to its usual level of awareness in stages. He let his thoughts linger on the warmth blowing onto his cheek from one of Starscream’s fans, the gentle pressure of Starscream’s hand rubbing circles on his back, the soft look he’d caught in Starscream’s optics when he’d first taken off the blindfold.

“I love you,” he said, before he could talk himself out of it.

Starscream tensed a little behind him. Later, Prowl would try to read any of a dozen things into the reaction – that Starscream was surprised but pleased, that he was wary of the possibility that Prowl was somehow using those words to manipulate him, that he was suddenly examining for the first time whether he felt the same way. But for now, all that mattered was what Starscream said back. “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> the thought that led to this word vomit was literally just “Prowl and Starscream. Two subs who are cool with playacting as Doms. Symbiosis.”


End file.
